Talk:Walls of Constantinople

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Walls of Constantinople has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
November 26, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
May 20, 2007	Good article nominee	Listed
August 28, 2008	Good article reassessment	Kept
November 27, 2023	Good article reassessment	Kept
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on January 27, 2012, January 27, 2015, November 6, 2017, November 6, 2018, and November 6, 2020.
Current status: Good article

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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Date of the 447 earthquake

This article uses the date 6 November 447 for the earthquake that severely damaged the Theodosian walls. As the article for the earthquake makes clear, that is only one of the dates that have been proposed, with 26 January, 8 November and 8 December all being proposed (I've since found sources that use 4 November as well). The 26 January date comes from Malalas, and is supported by Marcellinus's description of the event being in "early 447". The 6 November date comes from the Chronicon Paschale. All this is taken from Guidoboni et al. 1994, accessible here (you'll need to click on "Comm." on that page to bring this up). Nicholas Ambraseys regards the 26 January earthquake as a foreshock to the main event on 6 November,[1] so there is no agreement amongst seismologists any more than there is between historians. Mikenorton (talk) 12:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GA Reassessment

Walls of Constantinople

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Kept. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:23, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Later history" section marked with a "needs more sources" banner since October 2022. Other short uncited statements in the article. Z1720 (talk) 18:06, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The stuff in that "Later History" section should be very easy to source; it essentially boils down to a very compressed narratives of the city's sieges in 1422 and 1453. I'm not seeing any CN tags outside that section, and the GA criteria don't require everything to be sourced, only one citation per paragraph plus anything controversial, directly attributed or likely to be challenged. Did you have any particular unsourced statements in mind?

I can see a couple of small-ish things (e.g. a couple of slightly weird inline citations, some slightly strange and purple prose), but I'm not sure I'm seeing a real argument for delisting: it mostly seems like it's picked up some lint which could be trimmed off without too much difficulty and without massively affecting the article overall. Of course, I might not be looking in the same places as you are! UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:48, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@UndercoverClassicist and Z1720: anything still outstanding? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:12, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There's been some improvements, but there are still some uncited sentences. Also, it seems like the majority of the article is cited to van Millingen, who published their work in 1899. Should this source be used as the majority source of this article? Can other sources be used? Z1720 (talk) 18:32, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a bit of work on ancient topography: it's fair to say that it was far more in vogue, as a field, in the 19th/early 20th century, so it's not unusual for the most current source for the minutiae of where such-and-such a temple was to be from the 1920s or so. Just scanning through, Van Millingen seems to be mostly used for fairly pedestrian details (for instance, the names and locations of the walls' various gates), and I would be extremely surprised if much of that had been re-evaluated and totally unsurprised if V-M was the last person to bother to handle the topic in detail. At any rate, I think it clears the bar as a reliable source: there's no requirement in GA to be abreast of current scholarship or even to use the best sources available (that's much more an FA thing).

On unsourced sentences: at the risk of repeating myself, that's not inherently a problem for GA: in fact, unless those sentences are massive controversial, direct quotations or BLP, or ~~unless those sentences conglomerate into an uncited paragraph~~ (that's not quite a fair summary), the GA criteria pass no judgement here at all. It might help if you threw in a few CN tags to the article: in most cases, I've been able to track down sources for apparently uncited bits fairly easily.

I'd agree that it's not a perfect article, but could you explain which part of the GA criteria you think it currently fails? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:21, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

UndercoverClassicist, the GA criteria were changed in an RfC earlier this year; it is now required that "all content that could reasonably be challenged ... must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph". Z1720 may be referring to occasions such as: It was known in late Ottoman times as the Tabak Kapı., or If this theory is correct, the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, died in the vicinity of this gate during the final assault of 29 May 1453. Support to this theory comes from the fact that the particular gate is located at a far weaker section of the walls than the "Cannon Gate", and the most desperate fighting naturally took place here.. Hope that helps, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:33, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - on second reading, there are one or two paragraphs that don't end with a citation; I failed to find a (good) citation for the Tabak Kapı, so might end up having to remove it; will do another go-through to catch the others. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 13:46, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I added cn tags to the places that I think need citations. Z1720 (talk) 14:11, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So that's four sentences to be cited, and then the article can be kept. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: My understanding is that any reasonable cn tag is a per se challenge and a citation must be provided. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:38, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone through; that's all the CN tags cleared. I haven't done a full sweep for other dodgy statements, so there may well be more that can be added. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:44, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mistake in References

I am researching the Fall of Constantinople and decided to utilize Raymond Janin's book, however, this page's references are a little off, such as the first reference to the founding of Byzantion and Byzas, which states that it was found between pages 10 and 12, however upon finding the book on the Internet Archive, I found that same information between pages 16 and 17. 2A00:23C6:1020:9001:7821:E64:DE7C:2CE0 (talk) 18:30, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]